Jim Crow lives in the state's redistricting maps

Updated 1:33 am, Sunday, December 18, 2011

That's my distillation of Texas' argument for why the U.S. Supreme Court should be just fine with redistricting that shorts minority voters — substantially Latinos — of representation.

Yeah, I know, the state's argument will be larded with enough legalese to dazzle the justices and will be oozing somber claims of fairness and citations defending a state Legislature's right to draw lines without interference from buttinsky judges.

But boil it all down and we come down to an argument — and a case — that might have the effect of eviscerating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, treating it as if it is an unneeded relic of the long gone bad ol' days.

Section 5 says that states with histories of thwarting Latinos, blacks and others at the ballot box should have their new maps precleared, usually by the Justice Department. This to determine if the maps are drawn with the intent to discriminate or otherwise make matters worse for minorities.

(By the way, using previous maps as a baseline for new maps is a lot like using Oliver Twist's Fagin as the model for a Santa Claus makeover.)

But if a majority on the Supreme Court is intent on doing away with much fairer interim maps drawn by a federal court here in the absence of precleared maps, the danger is that it will mangle Section 5 to do that.

It might have to pretend that we've reached the prophesized mountain top. The state Legislature's new maps are proof, however, that we're still lingering in the foothills of racial and ethnic equity when it comes to representation.

Voters of color accounted for about 90 percent of the state's population growth in the last decade, Latinos providing most of this. But the state Legislature drew its maps to make majority-minority only one of the four new congressional seats earned because of this growth. The lines are drawn to elect and reelect the party that controls the Legislature — no matter which party is on top.

The state House map is worse. It reduced so-called minority opportunity districts from 50 to 45.

Jim Crow lives in these maps. He's pretending that if he says his maps are intended to favor Republicans, not target Latinos who just happen to vote Democrat, this isn't racist.

Mr. Crow is a bit more sophisticated these days. Gone are the poll taxes and the white primary, Texas' historic tools. Now, redistricting and, yes, voter ID, serve the cause.

The point is: Don't relinquish power. If there are rules or shifting demography that require it, change the rules and ignore the shifts. Find a friendly court. Texas is banking that the U.S. Supreme Court is it.

But one of Section 5's functions is to block redistricting shenanigans. Even using the low bar of previous maps, this is a worthy tool. But, in Texas it is extremely worthy since the new growth so clearly dictates the need to provide more opportunities for minority preferences in elections.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will still exist as a basis for legal challenge should a Supreme Court majority gut Section 5. Section 2 explicitly prohibits voting discrimination.

But effectively opening the door for use of maps that haven't been precleared or directing a lower court to draw lines more closely resembling these maps would also open the door to much mischief in states where party hacks are all too willing to hang on to power at the expense of growing Latino and other minority populations.